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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an surprising envoy for the Trump administration newest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His strong connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent effort to settle the war.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

His close ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first trip to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

Following a chaotic first year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the recent plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” the VP stated.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or politicians residing in a dream world,” he added. “It might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable ceasefire will necessitate each party to consent to challenging but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to develop a set of potential solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from feedback from each party of this war.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is also based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”